


The Death of the Mighty Jabba Desilijic Tiure (In Five Acts)

by celinamarniss



Series: Legacy [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: 5 Times, Academia, Adopted Children, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Lost in Translation, Rashomon Effect, Storytelling, Unreliable Narrator, popular media in a galaxy far far away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-04-13 13:40:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14113542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celinamarniss/pseuds/celinamarniss
Summary: Everyone has a story about the day Jabba died.





	1. Mara

**Author's Note:**

> _“Get her to tell you the story of how she rescued me from Jabba the Hutt. That's a good one."_ —Legacy 
> 
> Han’s rescue from Jabba’s Palace goes down a little differently in the Legacy ‘verse than it did in Return of the Jedi. How differently? Well, it depends on who you ask. 
> 
> If you’re new to the Legacy series, what you need to know is that Luke died at Bespin, leaving Leia alone to rescue Han from Jabba. Before Luke died, he and Mara Jade were in a relationship, and their son Ben was born after Bespin while Mara was on the run from Darth Vader.

“Did you hear?” The man who spoke was a middle-aged human, his skin dark and hair graying, the wide hood of his rain-damp cloak pulled down around his shoulders. He took a seat at the table, his companion, a twitchy-looking Kiffar teenager with blue qukuff facial tattoos, taking the seat beside him. “The slug is dead.”

Up and down the length of the long table, beings shifted in their seats to get a closer look at the pair, and conversations died as the participants leaned in to hear the newcomers better. Mara didn’t bother. She’d glanced up to take note of the newcomers as they took their seats on the other side of the table, but her attention was weighed primarily on the squirming bundle in her arms. She missed the next series of exchanges as she shifted a fussing Ben to her other breast. The Zabrak to her right and human woman to her left ignored her and Ben, the Zabrak leaning in to hear the newcomers better, his head turned so that the hearing device in his left ear was pointed away from her. 

The dingy cafeteria in the lower levels of the Eriadu City was filled with other down-on-their-luck individuals: vagrants, single mothers, smugglers, and factory workers. This close to the spaceports, the cafeteria accepted clientele no matter their species, which wasn’t the case elsewhere on the planet. Cleanliness wasn’t the cafeteria’s top priority, and the smell of too many unwashed bodies packed together in an enclosed space mingled with the smell of stewed vegetables and fried fish. The beings who gathered there came for the cheap food and temporary shelter, and any new off-planet gossip was a welcome bonus. 

They paid little attention to Mara and Ben. The coat Mara wore had seen better days, and those better days had probably been back in the days of the Republic, before she’d even been born. She smelled, too, though it was a milky, baby smell that Mara found she didn't mind. She let the conversation drift over her as Ben nursed. 

"It’s true! Jabba’s dead," the Kiffar teen said. "It was the Rebel Princess who killed him!” 

Mara was listening now.

“The Rebel Princess?” someone at the table scoffed.

“Why would the Rebels want to off Jabba?” a Rodian asked.

“Why _wouldn’t_ they want to off Jabba?” the older man said. “Kriffing slug.”

“Jabba does run lots of bounty hunters,” the human woman to Mara’s left said.

“Yeah, maybe so. Lots of bounties on the Rebels,” the Rodian agreed.

“Territory,” a gruff Togruta halfway down the table said. “Strategic.”

It wasn’t part of any strategy Mara had ever heard of in any Alliance debriefings, and the very idea that _Leia_ would stoop to assassinate a crime lord on Tatooine was completely implausible.

“Anyway,” the Kiffar teen cut back in again. “They sent the Rebel Princess to kill the slug—”

“We heard it from Feenar the Lizard,” the older man said, interrupting his younger companion. “He was on Tatooine. He heard it from Bossk, who was there when it happened.”

There were a couple murmurs of recognition up and down the table.

The teenager continued in spite of the interruptions. “The Princess disguised herself as the bounty hunter Boossh—”

“Boushh,” his companion corrected.

“—Boushh—”

“Wears a helmet and a voice synthesizer,” the older man informed their audience. The teen looked annoyed at his companion’s contributions, and waited pointedly until the other man had lapsed into silence again.

“So she marches into the Hutt’s lair, dressed as Boushh, with her Wookiee bodyguard at her side. She stands before the slug, who sits on his golden throne, surrounded by gorgeous Twi’lek slave girls, dancing half naked—”

The older man elbowed his younger companion quickly, his eyes cutting over to Mara, who bit back a smirk. The teenager cut off, with a guilty look in Mara and Ben’s direction, and then started again, having abandoned the more salacious details of his story.  

“The Princess steps right up to Jabba’s throne. Jabba can’t tell that it was her, because of the mask and voice synthesizer. She tells the Hutt his days are numbered, that the Rebels won’t stand for his filthy schemes, and then…” He waited a beat. “She pulls out a thermal detonator!”

The entire table, and a few nearby, listened in rapt silence now.

“She activates the thermal detonator and holds it up so that the whole court can see!” The teen raised a hand, too, cupped as if holding an invisible sphere. “But Jabba just laughs! Because—Wait, I should have said earlier, but the floor under the Princess’s feet is a trap door that drops into the pit where Jabba keeps his rancor. So she’s standing right over the rancor pit! Jabba just hits a button, and down she goes, into the rancor pit.”

“Jabba does have rancor pit, that’s true!” the Rodian said. “My cousin’s seen his rancors.”

There was a brief argument as to the approximate size of the rancor that Mara missed most of as she shifted a now sleeping Ben into the sling that wrapped around her shoulder and held him snug against her. When she looked up again the story had continued.

“—everyone leans in, you know, to hear her screams and the crunch of her bones as the rancors devours her.” The teen’s face glowed with macabre delight as he continued his story, pausing to draw out his audience’s full appreciation. “But what they _didn’t know_ is that the Princess had made a pact with a Dathomiri witch, and the witch taught the Princess a powerful spell that the witches use to bind rancors to their will—” 

There as a scoff further down the table that was ignored. It hadn’t been Mara, though she felt similarly about the teen’s embellishments.

“The Princess casts the witch’s spell and the rancor falls under her command. The monster claws its way up out of the pit, right up the side of the wall and into Jabba’s throne room, the Princess riding on its back. It was chaos! The Princess shouts a Dathomiri spell and the rancor falls on the Hutt like a starving rathtar.”

“She survived the rancor?” An elderly Neimoidian, a beat behind the story, asked aloud and was quickly hushed.

“The rancor digs his long, razor-sharp claws into Jabba’s flesh, his teeth ripping into Jabba’s head as the slug makes his last screams for mercy. He wrenches off Jabba’s head and spits it across the room, the Hutt's blood splattering across the walls. The monster roars _so loud_ it shakes the foundations of the palace. Then,” He paused again for dramatic effect. “Princess orders the rancor to tear the entire crowd to bits. The monster rushes into the crowd, crushing bounty hunters skulls between his teeth and tearing slaves limb from limb. Their screams echo through the palace until— _until every last one of them_ is dead.”

A pair of Duros shook their heads, disturbed by the delight the teen was taking at describing the violent scene, but the rest of the crowd seemed to appreciate his flair for the dramatic. 

“She only saves one person from the bloodbath,” he continued. “A slave girl, the most beautiful Twi’lek in Jabba’s Palace. Her beauty didn’t escape the Princess’s notice, and she spared the slave girl from the massacre and lifted her up on the back of the rancor next to her. They rode the rancor out of the Palace together, as Jabba’s court burned behind them.” 

Murmurs of satisfaction ran up and down the table.

 _Chewbacca,_ Mara thought of the big-hearted Wookie with a pang. He’d forgotten about Chewbacca. He’d never even mentioned Han. Mara wondered if they were both still alive. If they'd been killed, perhaps by the Hutt—no, they couldn't have been. They _couldn't_...

“What happened to the thermal detonator?” the Togruta asked.

“What?” 

“You said she threw a thermal detonator at Jabba,” the Rodain said. “What happened to the thermal detonator?”

The teenager seemed stumped and glanced at his companion for support.

The older man shrugged. “It did blow. Half of Jabba’s Palace.”

“But when? A hand-held thermal detonator has a very short timing mechanism! It wouldn’t have been enough time for her to escape the rancor pit, let alone set the rancor on Jabba!”

“A thermal grenade’s range isn’t big enough to blow up half the palace,” someone further down the table pointed out.

“That’s the story that Feenar the Lizard told us, I swear!” The teen looked flustered now that his audience had begun to openly challenge his story.

Conversation around the table began to fragment again, different parties arguing the gaps of logic in the tale, and others exchanging stories they knew about Jabba and his people. Mara made sure that Ben was secure in his sling and then rose to her feet, and, with one last glance at the storytellers, who were still engaged in an argument with the Rodian, left the cafeteria.

It was time to meet her contact.

It was still raining outside, a thin drizzle that made the streets slick and left a fine layer of droplets on the hood of Mara’s coat. It was growing late, and most of the shabby businesses that crowded the narrow streets in this section of Eiadu City were shuttered for the night.

She was only a few steps from the cafeteria door, still blinking in the dim orange street light, when she saw the white armor. She should have known that patrols would be sweeping this part of the city, which had been placed under a high-security alert by the Imperial government only the day before, due to a break-in at the Governor’s Palace. It was too late to turn back inside without drawing attention to herself, so she continued forward steadily, hoping that the patrol wouldn’t bother to harass a poor single mother.

“You there!”

No such luck.

“Present your identification!”

The Stormtrooper blocked her path, holding out his hand. The rest of the troop moved away from the Twi’lek they’d been questioning to flank the trooper that had approached her, as though they sensed a fresh target to toy with.

Mara shifted Ben in her arms, fumbling for her bag. Slowly—making a show of appearing flustered and disorganized; just a poor hapless human mother, flashing an embarrassed smile as she held out her ID. Only an expert slicer with good equipment would be able to tell the ID was fake, but the Stormtrooper could still detain her for any reason he found fit. She had the privilege of being human on an Imperial-held planet, but she was obviously poor, in a bad part of town, and alone. She shouldn’t have been on the street in this sector so close to curfew, and with the city on high alert, the chances were higher that he would have her searched.

Somewhere in the city, Admiral Delvardus was growing increasingly panicked about a set of dispatches that had gone missing, outlining the troop movements for an Imperial rendezvous at some obscure planet called Endor. He’d already put the high alert into effect and sent stormtroopers into the streets, searching frantically for a file that had been sliced onto a datacard and had slipped out of the Governor’s Palace in the hands of a woman pretending to be a maintenance worker.

Mara had abandoned the maintenance uniform when she’d picked Ben up from the safe house, before she’d made her way to this neighborhood to meet the contact that Karrde had told her would relieve her of the stolen intelligence. The dispatches could amount to nothing, or they could help turn the tide of the war. Karrde would make sure they got into Alliance hands—at a price, of course. If the Stormtooper decided to search her he would find set of datacards hidden in the sling that held Ben close to her body.

Unless he decided that it wasn’t worth his time.

She drew the Force around her, preparing to test her will against his, and then—Ben let out a flawlessly timed squawk of annoyance, causing the Stormtrooper to flinch back in surprise. She curled her arms around Ben, making a show of shushing him as he howled even louder—her perfect boy. The other troopers began to shift restlessly behind the man who held her ID, managing to project irritated impatience even behind the white helmets.

When she’d managed to calm Ben again she expected him to hand her back her identification and wave her by, but instead, he stepped closer, tilting his helmet down to look at her.

“There you are, dearie,” a voice, rough with age, came from behind her. “Lend your old grandmother your arm.”

An old woman stepped close, hooking a hand in Mara’s arm and leaning heavily on her. Mara shifted to support her weight, bracing the old woman, who turned toward the Stormtroopers before Mara could get a good look at her face. She was dressed in a tatty cloak and baggy, unwashed clothes, her weathered face shadowed by the hood of her cloak. The knitted glove covering the hand that clutched Mara’s arm was ragged and unraveling, and looked like it had once been green. The hand was human, probably. She’d come to Mara’s side so quickly that she must have been watching her, either within the cafeteria or close by.

“We aren’t in any trouble now, are we officer?” The old woman wheedled at the stormtrooper. “We don’t want to take up any of your time, a busy man like you.”

“No, Ma’am. You shouldn’t be out, this time of night—”

“No, of course not, sir, but you know what it’s like with an old woman like me, don’t move as fast as I used to. My dear granddaughter, she helps me out, she does, but she can’t help it if I take too much time placing my bets at the bookies, and she can’t stay in there, not with the cigarra smoke so thick. Not with a little one. She’s a good girl, she looks after me, I just lose track of the time, don’t I, dear?”

“Yes, Grandmother.”

“I had no idea it was this late, and so close to curfew! My granddaughter, she worries about me, the sweet little tooka. And she has the baby to care for! Have you seen the precious little thing, officer? Has my eyes, I always say, don’t I dear?”   

“Yes, Ma’am—yes, move along. Move along.” He handed Mara her ID and signaled to the rest the troopers to follow him down the street.

“Of course, Officer. Bless you for keeping our streets safe. Bless you.” Mara felt as a subtle tug on her arm as the old woman chattered away. “Now come along, dearie, we have to get home before curfew.”

“Of course, Grandmother,” Mara said. The old woman had pulled her arm to the left, so she took the left side of the street, turning down a side alley when the other woman tapped her wrist. It was a long winding passageway that led them away from the thoroughfare.

She looked askance at the other woman as she guided her down the alley. “Did you find the hasisi bulbs you were looking for, Grandmother?”

“Yes dear, I’m the contact Lighthouse sent. _My favored vendor was all sold out,_ and all that.  And you’re Firebird. Lighthouse does love his codes, doesn’t he?” The woman’s tone was patronizing, but Mara noted that she stuck to the codenames Karrde had assigned them.

The other woman stopped under the shelter of an overhang. “There’s a blind spot here,” she said. “Between the security sweeps. Should last until the handover.”

She stepped away from Mara, straightening and letting the hood fall away from her face. In the light, Mara could see that the woman was younger than she’d first appeared, her body language deceptive. She was old enough to have been Mara’s mother, but perhaps not her grandmother. At her full height, she was thin and lean, and taller than Mara. The rough quality of her voice came likely came from a cigarra habit, and while she did smell like lom beer, her eyes were sharp and unclouded.

“Now, dear. What have you got for your dear grandmother?”

“My payment?” She’d received half at the beginning of her mission, enough to buy new IDs and transport to Eriadu.

A credit chip appeared in the woman’s hand and she held it out. Mara took the chip, and then dug into the hidden pocket she’d sewn into the lining of Ben’s sling and retrieved the datacards, passing them over to the other woman. The datacards disappeared under her cloak faster than Mara’s eye could trace, with the quick-fingered technique of a pick-pocket. Where the cards had been was now a pack of cigarras, which the woman tapped into her other hand.

And that was it. Mara’a mission was done.

The other woman lit a cigarra, making it clear she was in no hurry to rush off. Mara shifted back a few paces, away from the smoke.

“Firebird,” the woman mused. Her gaze flicked down to where Ben was sleeping in the sling. “Lighthouse mentioned you were a freelancer,” she said, blowing smoke out of the side of her mouth. “He didn’t give me your name.” Mara raised an eyebrow and the other woman chuckled. “I’m a freelancer, too. Lighthouse treats us fair, for whatever that’s worth. Though things could change.” Another drag on her cigarra. “Just between you and me, Lighthouse is looking to snap up as much of Jabba’s network as he can manage, before the rest of the Hutts get to it.”

“That was true? Jabba’s really dead?”

“Yeah, and what’s left of his cartel’s in freefall. Chaos.” She took a deep drag on her cigarra before continuing. “Though most folks aren’t too broken up about it. Half the smuggling world was in debt to the Hutt, and now that he’s gone they’ve got a new lease on life, thanks to the Princess.”

“Was Leia Organa really involved?”

She flicked the cigarra. “That’s the story. I’ve heard it elsewhere as well.”

Mara didn’t believe a single word that had come out of the Kiffar teenager’s mouth, but maybe—maybe if anyone could take down the Hutt, Leia could. The last time that she’d seen Leia, the Princess had been giving orders to evacuate Hoth, her small frame lit with the confidence that they would make it through, as though Leia’s hope alone could fuel the entire Rebellion and burn the Empire to the ground. If anyone could take on the Hutt, Leia could.

Luke should have been there at her side.

Mara should have been there, too—that was what they’d dreamed of doing together, of ridding the Galaxy of the cruelty of the Empire and the corruption of crime lords like the Hutt, of becoming true heirs to the legacy of the Jedi.

And then, Bespin—

It had only been—a year? had it really only been a year?—since Hoth. It all seemed so long ago, as though it had been someone else's life, as though she were an entirely different person. She tried not to think of her former life much—of Leia and Han, Chewbacca, Artoo and Threepio, Winter and—

(It was impossible not to think of Luke,  _Luke—_ and once-bright spaces in her head that were now empty and dead—) 

She sucked in a shaky breath and focused on the child in her arms. She couldn't let her grief swamp her, not here, not now. 

Now—now she had Ben. Now she had to stay in the shadows—she had to rely on dangerous jobs in order to keep her son alive and out of the Emperor’s grasp, jobs given to her by a criminal not that far removed from the loathsome Hutt himself.

If the price to keep Ben safe was that she never saw Leia ever again, so be it. 

“What other stories have you heard?” she asked. _I_ _s Leia safe? Are Han and Chewbacca alive?_   There were so many other questions she wanted to ask, but she couldn't risk her cover by showing too much interest in the Rebels, and she doubted the accuracy of the woman's information anyway. 

The older woman shrugged. “The Hutt died, the palace burned, the rancor escaped into the desert, more of the same, depending on who tells it.”

Rumors and smuggler’s tales; told to entertain and pass the time in dive bars and cantinas, and told to pass on the news that the balance of power had shifted out of the Hutt’s grasp and into the hand of new operatives. 

Mara would probably never know the truth of the story. 

“Another patrol will sweep through in half an hour,” the other woman said. 

Mara nodded. Time enough to make it to the refugee shuttle at the Eriadu spaceport. She couldn’t wait to have this planet at her back. Ben was still quiet, thank the Force, sleeping again in his sling. If she was able to secure a bunk on the shuttle, maybe she could catch a little sleep herself before he needed feeding again.

“Thank you,” she said. “Tell Lighthouse—“ She shook her head, reconsidering. There was nothing he needed to hear. “He knows how to find me.”

The other woman studied her for a long moment and then dropped the remains of her cigarra onto the ground, crushing the lit end with the toe of her boot. “Safe travels, Firebird,” she said, as she threw the hood up on her cloak and slipped in the old woman’s hunch, hobbling off into the rain.


	2. Leia

They were in the Fei Hu sector when the Falcon’s hyperdrive had failed, _again,_ and after spending an entire day tearing out fuel lines and exhaust conduits, Han announced that he’d need to buy a new set of fuel lines and a hydroflux pump in order for the ship to run properly. Basic parts you could get anywhere and were usually lying around the hold waiting for Leia to trip over them, but for once, Han couldn’t find a single spare hydroflux pump on the entire ship. There was nothing for it but to head to the nearest planet, no matter its affiliation, for a set of replacements. The Falcon limped to Beris and after a lively argument with the local customs officers, they were allowed to dock in Beris City’s spaceport for the few hours needed to pick up parts.

A maze of cramped streets lined with overflowing shops surrounded the spaceport, and even though Leia knew that Han had never been to Beris before, he always behaved as though every spaceport was just like the next and that he had an instinctive understanding of the surrounding area. He moved confidently down a block until he found a shop that he liked the look of, though Leia couldn’t tell what made this particular store distinct from all the others.

Every shop on the street seemed to be selling the same jumbled assortment of items, from tools to cooking supplies to cheaply made household goods. Leia left Han sorting through a stack of coiled tubing and began to wander through the store, idly looking for anything they might need for the Falcon or their quarters back on the Alliance base.

In one corner of the store, a holoprojector was playing a cheap, sensational adventure on a screen that ran along the side wall. The splashy, bright colors drew her eye and she found herself drawn to the holo, watching it as she slowly moved by a row of cleaning products.   

It took another few minutes for the realization of _what_ she was watching to sink in; that the woman cavorting around in the holodrama was meant to be _her._ The dark-haired, svelte actress did bear a passing resemblance, though she was at least a head taller and dressed in a golden bikini that Leia wouldn’t have been caught dead in. _Why,_ in all Corellian Hells, would Leia have disguised herself as a _dancing girl_ to sneak into Jabba’s palace?

Wisps of shimmering fabric hung from the bottom half of the bikini, concealing _nothing,_ and a golden chain hung from a jeweled collar around the woman’s neck, the other end of the chain gripped in the Hutt’s fist. The crime lord himself was represented by an unconvincing puppet that looked as though it had been made by someone who had never even seen a Hutt. _“The Huttslayer!”_ a holographic banner floating above the moving figures pronounced, listing the holo’s availability and price.

On the screen, the actress was giving an impassioned speech, her eyes brimming with tears, but the holo’s sound had been muted so as not to distract anyone from their haggling and Leia couldn’t make out what she was saying to the puppet-Jabba. The Hutt roared a reply, and then yanked the actress closer and closer by the length of the golden chain.

The actress’s mouth stretched open in a silent scream, and the scene cut away to another set-piece, where a tall, dark-haired actor struggled against a pack of Gamorrean guards. Once again, it took her a moment to map reality onto the fictional likeness in front of her and to realize that the dashing actor was meant to be Han.

 _He_ hadn’t rescued _her,_ she thought indignantly, and wished, for a second, that she’d seen the beginning of the holo so that she could be incensed by whatever ludicrous reason they’d made up for her being captured by Jabba in the first place.

A Wookie fought at his side, presumably impersonating Chewbacca, though the actor’s fur was several shades darker than Chewbacca’s. Lando was nowhere to be seen. Maybe they’d killed him off earlier in the holo.

The scene cut back to the throne room, and Leia watched as the actress leapt up onto a platform conveniently located behind the Hutt’s head, and lashed the tacky golden chains around Jabba’s neck. Leia winced as the actress writhed provocatively as she strangled the puppet. Jabba flopped about and finally expired, his tongue lolling out in a grotesque grimace.  

The entire holodrama was an offensive farce, made worse by one tiny sliver of truth: Jabba _had_ died at her hand.

It all seemed like it was going to plan, at first.

Jabba’s Palace had been darker and grubbier than the set in the holodrama, and smaller than she had expected, and even the throne room was filled with alcoves and shadowed corners. A grotesque court of slaves, smugglers, and bounty hunters were packed into the cramped and dingy room, all existing simply to please the powerful Hutt.

Just as they’d planned, she’d bluffed her way into the Palace disguised as Boushh and handed Chewie over to Jabba’s guards. She had demanded that Boba Fett escort Chewbacca to his cell, feeding the Hutt some line about trusting no other bounty hunter to escort her prize down to cells in the lower levels of the Palace.

This was a rescue mission _first,_ she had insisted, but Chewbacca had his own ideas about what Fett deserved, and there were times, more often than she wanted to admit, when she wanted nothing more than for the Wookie to tear Fett limb from limb, and she failed to put up much of an argument. As they left the throne room she knew that she’d never see Fett again.

Her audience with Jabba over, and the Hutt suitably impressed by her posturing, she took her place among the other sycophants of Jabba’s court; all part of the plan that she and Chewbacca and Lando had labored over for months.

It had taken an entire year for all the pieces to fall into place. A year of planning and waiting for a lull in Alliance assignments, for Lando to install himself as one of the Palace guards, and for her grief over the loss of Han, Mara, and _Luke_ to have eased enough for her focus on the rescue mission.

A year after Bespin she stood in the Hutt’s Palace, the plan to rescue Han already in motion. It felt as though her entire body was humming with adrenaline, but her voice hasn’t shaken as she spoke to the Hutt, and her hands didn’t shake as she placed the thermal detonator back on her belt.

When she’d been a little girl, her parents had made her take meditation classes and insisted that she spend hours practicing mindfulness techniques with her tutors. She’d dreaded those lessons, longing to run away and play out in the gardens with Winter instead of being stuck inside practicing _inner serenity,_ but she was grateful for those lessons now. They had taught her that she could always access a source of strength deep inside of her, and she could draw from that seemingly limitless well whenever she needed it most. It had kept her from collapsing on the bridge of the Death Star, kept her from becoming unmoored with grief after Bespin, and carried her through every defeat at the hand of the Imperials since. It kept her steady in Jabba’s Palace, in spite of the danger the surrounded her on all sides.

And then everything had gone wrong.

She didn’t realize it was going wrong at first. A sense of foreboding had washed over her the second she’d hit the hidden detonator on her belt, though at the time she thought it was just nerves. A quiet, distant rumble was the only indication that the explosives that Lando had hidden in the Palace’s power station has gone off, muffled by the raucous sound of the band and crowd cheering on the dancing girls.

The lights had gone out—which _had_ been according to plan—and the throne room was thrown into chaos. Shouting cut through the dark, punctuated by a slave girl’s wail and the constant, high-pitched shrieking of Jabba’s monkey lizard. Over the noise, Jabba roared for his guards, who stumbled around in the pitch-black as they attempted to follow orders.

The enhanced scanner in Boushh’s helmet allowed Leia to see in the dark, but she knew that there might be other bounty hunters in the room with the same advantage. It was her job to make sure no one looked in the direction of the carbonite slab on the far wall, or stumbled into the alcove and caught Lando, freeing the slab from the wall and lowering it onto a hovercart. She scanned the room for any sign of possible interference as the rest of the court floundered blindly in the dark.

Sooner than Leia had expected, Bib Fortuna activated a set of emergency sandstorm lamps, set low in the walls throughout the room and not connected to the main power grid. A dull green glow washed through the room, offering limited illumination to the panicked court. At Fortuna’s hissed command, Jabba’s guards set themselves around the dais, protecting their bellowing master. Several bounty hunters joined them, not for any love of the Hutt, but of the reward he might offer to anyone who stopped an assassination attempt.

None of them had been watching the dancing girls. Leia heard a shout and saw Bib Fortuna go down, a shadowed figure in the dark pulling him to the floor. It was hard to tell what happened next, and Jabba’s guards had been too dumbfounded by the attack to act quickly enough to save the majordomo’s life. Fortuna’s scream cut off abruptly, and everyone heard the wet sound of his head hitting the floor. In the panic that followed, a smuggler fired his blaster into the darkened room, whipping the crowd into a further frenzy.

Then a growl rumbled through the throne room, drowning out the orders the Hutt was barking at his guards and the noisy chaos of the court. The shouting died away; even Jabba fell silent as the rancor lurched out from under the archway that led down to the lower levels and stalked into the room.

The power cut _wasn’t_ supposed to have affected the rancor’s pit in the lower levels. Every source they’d studied on the Palace’s power grid had indicated that the rancor’s pit was hooked to a separate generator, but it wasn’t hard to imagine that somewhere along the line, someone had gotten sloppy with the wiring.

Smugglers and servants fled from the creature, the quicker-witted old-timers flocking to the nearest escape routes, while the rest of the terrified crowd packed into the dead end alcoves that lined the room. Leia was pushed back among them. Her head whipped around to the platform where the carbonite slab had hung, but Lando had already taken Han and gone. She didn’t think she could reach the exit that he’d taken without drawing the attention of the enraged rancor.

The rancor’s claws wrapped around Jabba’s body and it began to twist and tear at the Hutt, who writhed and screamed, a sound of pure terror that Leia would never, ever forget. The screams seemed to stretch on and on until Leia couldn’t stand it any longer. She raised her blaster and fired at the Hutt’s head, and watched as the shot hit true and the life went out of the Hutt’s eyes.

A Gamorrean guard saw the kill shot and leapt for her, knocking her to the ground as he tried to break her neck with his bare hands. He’d wrenched off her helmet instead before she managed to shoot him as well. The helmet that had masked her features rolled away into the shadows and Leia hadn’t bothered to chase it. Han would find bruises on her neck later, and the bruises to her ribs would ache for days, every time she took a breath.

At the time she didn’t even feel the damage. She scrambled to her to her feet again as her eyes adjusted to the dim green light. She found herself pressed next to Oola in the gloom, the dancing girl splattered with blood that was not her own, the chain that had once bound her to Jabba still dangling from her throat, ending in a mangled knot of metal above her waist. She still held the vibroknife she’d stolen from a bounty hunter—the knife she’d used to free herself and cut Bib Fortuna’s throat—in a white-knuckled grip.

Leia reached out in the dark and grabbed the dancer’s other hand, ignoring the stickiness of the blood on Oola’s fingers. It was time to act—she didn’t want to be trapped in a corner when the rancor lost interest in Jabba and turned on the crowd. She made a break from the group, pulling the other woman with her. Together they bolted across the floor, around the crumpled corpse of a Jawa, and toward the flight of stairs that lead out of throne room.

 _Don’t turn around don’t notice us don’t turn around don’t turn around_ she thought frantically at the rancor, who still crouched over the dais, tearing at the remains of the Hutt.

Leia jerked Oola to a stop at the top of the first set of stairs. They were framed in the arch above the floor of the throne room, and Leia turned to look back. The rancor was still preoccupied, but the rest of the court hadn’t followed her, trapped by their own terror.

“Everyone! _Get out!”_ she shouted into the throne room. “This way!”

To her shock, they _listened._ The remaining crowd scrambled along the far wall—as far from the rancor as they could manage—and rushed up the stairs, fleeing toward the massive doors at the entrance to the Palace.

Leia’s heart leapt into her throat as the rancor turned its head in her direction, and Oola gripped her hand so hard it hurt, cursing under her breath in Huttese. Its eyes were bright above the blood-soaked maw of teeth, and she found herself frozen in place as the monster studied her, and then turned back to its feast, unconcerned by the exodus behind Leia.

She waited until she could hear the crunch of the rancor’s teeth as it continued its meal, and then  Leia turned to Oola. “I need to get to the barge dock,” she said, slowly and clearly. She wasn’t sure the Twi’lek understood Basic, but the other woman nodded and led her away from the throne room, down a series of corridors that Leia knew she wouldn’t have been able to navigate on her own by the dim glow of the occasional sandstorm light.

Lando, Chewbacca, and _Han,_ sightless and still groggy, were waiting for her at barge dock. She shouted his name as she ran towards him and he reached out blindly and scooped her into his arms.

“We should go,” Lando said, his voice tense as he helped Oola onto a cargo skiff. Chewie rumbled in agreement and helped her guide Han into the vehicle.

As the skiff pulled away from the docks, Leia pressed the second hidden detonator, setting off the charges that Lando had planted throughout the Palace during the months he’d been part of the guard. She knew that most of the court had fled the Palace to escape from the rancor, and she wasn’t sure she cared if those who stayed behind lived—they were all complicit in the slavery, kidnapping, and drug trade of the empire Jabba ran.

Minutes later, the south wall of the Palace tower exploded outward. The shock wave buffeted the cargo skiff and Lando struggled to keep the vehicle steady and put some distance between them and the burning Palace. From within the safe circle of Han’s arms, Leia watched the smoke plume rise into the air, a black cloud hovering over the shattered shell of Jabba’s Palace.

“But that’s not the way it really happened, is it?” The voice came from behind her, and she turned to see a middle-aged man, human, standing by a rack of brightly-packaged local food.

He saw her looking and gave her a smug, conspiratorial grin, and she wondered if he were about to claim that he’d been there that day. The number of smugglers who claimed to have been present for Jabba’s death now far exceeded the number of beings who could have possibly fit in the building.

“You can’t trust a holodrama to get it right, can you?” He shook his head at the holo. “I heard it was the last of the Jedi that got him.”

“What did you say?” She felt her entire body tense and everything around her go into sharp focus.

“That’s what happened to the last of the Jedi. The Rebel Jedi, whatshisname, Skywalker. He took out Jabba but the worm got him in the end, too. The Jedi died in that filthy sandhole.” He spat. “Good riddance to them both.”

Something inside her just snapped. A minute later, the man was stretched across the ground, her knuckles stinging from the blow. She sucked in a breath and stepped back as he howled, clutching his nose.

Han was at her side moments later, placing himself between her and the man she’d struck, who had struggled to his feet, his hand still pressed to his nose.

“Luke,” she all but snarled, “He said Luke—”

“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” Han soothed her as though she might take off and punch someone again. “Calm down. We don’t want to make a scene.”

Han was _right,_ they couldn’t draw attention to themselves. It was a luxury that only those not living under the threat of an Imperial bounty could afford, and there were already a few curious shoppers peering in their direction.

“Your girlfriend—” Behind Han she could see the other man still hovering.

“Get lost, buddy,” Han told him, the cold tone of his voice an implicit threat.

The man backed away, upending a stack of plastoid containers as he fled the shop. A shop attendant bustled up and gave them a sour look as she re-stacked the containers.

“Are you okay?” Han asked her.

“I’m fine. I—he said something about Luke, and I just—I couldn’t help it, Han.”

“Hey. Nothing anyone says changes who Luke was. They didn’t know him like we did. _We know_ —we remember who he really was, alright?”

She nodded.

He waved a hand, dismissing the holo still playing on the screen behind him. “No one believes a holodrama anyway.”

“I know,” she said. She didn’t look up at the holo.

“They didn’t know him,” he repeated.  

She nodded again, blinking back the sting of tears.

“I miss him, Han.”

“Yeah,” Han said, his voice rough. “Me too. It’s been what, four years?”

“Five.”

“Five, and I still keep thinking that he’ll be back any day. It doesn’t seem right that he’s gone.”

Five years.

She hadn’t expected Luke’s death to have affected her as deeply as the death of her family on Alderaan; as close as they’d been, she’d only known him for a few years, after all. She expected to miss him as Han missed him, with a wistful affection that would eventually ease with time. But Luke’s loss an ache that never went away; a wound that still felt fresh.

That Mara had disappeared at the same time had been salt in that wound. It had been five years, and they hadn’t found her; they didn’t even have a clue as to where she had gone or why she had disappeared. Leia knew that Han secretly wished that they’d find some evidence of her death—not at the hands of an Imperial torture droid, _Force, no_ —or some clue would give Leia closure. There had only been the occasional rumor that had come to nothing, and no matter how hard Leia had searched for her missing friend, she couldn’t find her.

She hadn’t been able to save Luke from a lonely death at Vader’s hand either, and at the time she thought that if that if she could just save Han from Jabba—it would be something.

But it was hard sometimes, even now, to think of their raid on Jabba’s Palace as a triumph.

“Did you know that Anakin Skywalker—Luke’s Father, the Jedi—was a slave?”

“I didn’t.”

“Lando and I found out when we were studying Tatooine, to—you know. We found records of Anakin Skywalker winning his freedom in a podrace. Luke was freeborn, but his family would have had to pay Jabba a water tithe.”

“He would have been proud that you killed Jabba.”

She nodded. “I like to think so.”

 _“I’m_ proud of you.” Han beamed. “Walked right in and snuck me out under the Hutt’s nose!”

“It was a little more complicated than _that,”_ she said.

“I know,” he said, his eyes shining.

It had been worth it.

Leia looked back over at the holo. The actress was swooning into the lead actor’s arms— _swooning, really?_ —as he practically sparkled out at the audience. She glanced at Han, expecting to find indignation written on his features, but found he was watching with a bemused expression on his face. He wasn’t offended and he wasn’t surprised. 

“You knew about this!” she said.

“Yeah, Chewie showed it to me. He’s got a copy; the fuzzball thinks the whole thing is hilarious. Lando’s—”

_“Lando?”_

“—just sore because he doesn’t get to be the hero. It’s not as bad as the Imperial holos about us, anyway. It’s just junk, don’t worry about it.”

They both looked back to where the holo still flickered against the wall, momentarily captivated by the action playing out, as the actor who played Han bested Boba Fett with the crack of a vibrowhip. The actress meant to be Leia clung to his side, apparently unable to remember how her legs worked.

“Do you even know how to _use_ a lightwhip?”

“Nope,” Han said.

He turned away from the holo and grinned at her, and he was more dashing than the holo actor in that trashy holodrama could even aspire. She was so glad she’d married him.

“The Huttslayer’s a trilogy, you know,” he said, as he threw an arm around her and began to lead her out of the shop. “In the sequels you kill Gardulla and Gorga.”

_“What?”_

 


	3. Lando

“Daddy, can you tell us a story?” Leika stood in the doorway to his study. She shuffled her feet, her big brown eyes wide and shining and her lower lip pouted just so. “Please?”

The girl was a born con artist. Lando couldn’t have been prouder. 

He set aside his datapad and managed to send her a stern look. “Have you washed up?” 

“Yes.” She tilted her head and batted her eyelashes, probably a taking the whole performance a touch too far. 

“Are you ready for bed?” He stood, crossed the room and took her hand, leading her down the hall to her room. 

“Ye-es.” 

At the doorway to her bedroom, she dropped his hand and skipped over to her bed, leaping up onto the mattress. From a reading nook on the other side of the room, Soland looked up from her datapad, frown on her face. Soland had her own room, but she often spent the evening ensconced in the reading nook in her little sister’s room, even if she spent it absorbed in her datapad. 

“What story would you girls like to hear?” Lando said as sat on the edge of Leika’s bed.  

“Jabba’s Palace!” Leika cried, bouncing in place. 

Lando pulled up the covers and tucked her in, handing over her favorite stuffed tooka, which she hugged to her body. Soland didn’t move from her spot in the reading nook, but she put down her datapad to listen. 

A few years after he’d joined the Alliance —after Bespin—he’d been running a base on Ord Pardron when a young teenage girl had been escorted to his office. It was the sort thing that happened fairly often; children whose families had been wiped out by the Imperials flocked to the cause with nothing to lose and fire in their hearts. Sita wasn’t the first, nor would she be the last. He had her removed from the base, but she just made her way back again, desperate to join the fight. She was too young to sent up in an X-Wing, and she refused to stay away, so Lando had taken Sita under his wing, making her his personal runner and assistant. The Alliance always needed pilots, but Lando was frequently appalled at how often people forgot that it needed administrators as well. 

On Ord Pardron, he’d given her a clothing stipend, insisting that if she wanted to remain his assistant, she couldn’t wear the same borrowed jumpsuit every day. Looking sharp sent a message of respect and self-respect, and he told her that one should always be aware of how one presented themselves to the galaxy, and especially to the troops under his command. 

Taking care of Sita’s well-being became a hard habit to break, and one he never really gave up. Dismayed that she didn’t actually have any piloting skills to speak of, he made sure that she took lessons from the other pilots on the base.  When she’d become an adequate pilot, he moved on to teaching her trading and smuggling codes, how to read a room and the person that sat across from you at the other end of a negotiation. 

Not entirely sure what was appropriate for an apprenticeship, he fell back on the skills that had served him well when getting by in a tough galaxy. It was an education that leaned more on ways to talk yourself out of a deal gone sour with a Hutt lord than on Galactic history. Her sabbac skills were the best in the quadrant. 

She came with him when Ord Pardon was destroyed and he moved on to Lan Barell, and then to Derricon. By Derricon, he didn’t trust anyone else with his paperwork. 

After Palpatine’s fall, the difficult work began, and Lando had been there at Leia’s side as the New Republic began its first wobbly steps. Sita had been at  _ his  _ side, with reports and minutes from Inner Council meetings, Senate proposals for him review, and documents to sign. 

He’d legally adopted Sita, when it became possible to do so, though it was more of a formality than anything else. By then she was old enough to make it on her own, and she knew that he would be there to support her if she ever called him for anything. She worked in Leia’s office in the Senate now, and he couldn’t have been more proud of her. 

Even though Sita wasn’t his assistant any longer, he still enjoyed their debriefs at the end of the day or end of a week, depending on how busy they both were. He also found that playing a doting uncle and watching the Solo babies grow and develop personalities of their own was a delight he’d never anticipated. 

Slowly the idea  _ Lando Calrissian, Family Man, _ took root in his head. He became enamored of the picture it painted, of being the head of a family to call his own. So many families had been shattered by the war, and he knew that the reality of the situation was that there were many, many children scattered throughout the galaxy who needed homes. 

(Nor was he blind to how popular the Organa-Solos and their three adorable children were in the eyes of the public and their political allies. It wasn’t that he considered politics over his family, but it was better to understand the game and how to play it well). 

He’d meant to wait a few more years, take time off from the NR to establish himself as an independent operator first, but then he’d gotten word that an acquaintance in the military had died in a raid and left behind his five-year-old daughter without a family to take her in. He could offer her a home, and he did. 

And  _ quickly _ discovered that the needs of a child were radically different from the needs of a self-reliant teenager, and felt vastly out of his depth for the first time in years. Leia and Han had stepped in and offered desperately needed guidance. 

“How are you so good at this?” he’d asked as Han swooped in to distract Soland from a brewing temper tantrum. 

Han shrugged. “Kids aren’t that hard to figure out,” he said. “You’ll pick it up fast.” 

Han was a damn liar. 

While he’d gone through an agency and all the official channels when adopting Soland, Leika had come into his life in much under less legitimate circumstances. 

Soland had barely been living with him for a year when his old friend Sana had shown up on his doorstep with a toddler. She had sworn the baby wasn’t hers, that she was the child of a relative who had died, but to this day he wasn’t sure of the truth. She disappeared again, chasing a bounty and her own demons, and he was left with a second child to care for. He could hardly blame Sana, having fallen in love with the child so fast he would have been tempted to put up a fight if Sana hadn’t left her in his care. He called the baby Leika, an Alderaanian variant of  _ Leia _ , as a way to honor their friendship. Her adoption papers recorded the name that Sana had given her, and he kept a file with the few scant details Sana had left before she disappeared, if Leika ever wanted to pursue the identity of her birth parents. 

After a few years on Coruscant, he decided to pursue a series of independent projects: a mining venture on Nkllon, a  _ mainly _ successful revitalization of Cloud City, and finally, a string of governmental offices on minor planets in need of his touch. In the Independent sector, things moved faster, paid better, and he could make a name for himself that wasn’t dependent on the machinations of the fledgling New Republic bureaucracy. 

That didn’t mean that didn’t keep his eye on political developments on Coruscant, or that he had completely disengaged his interests there. He worked hard on building a network among the political elite of the ‘Rim worlds, and whatever intelligence he gathered along the way he sent back to his contacts in the Core. Maintaining a reputation in both sectors was a delicate operation, but he knew all about making sure every piece was in place before you made your play. 

After all, _ Lando Calrissian, Chief of State, did _ have a nice ring to it. 

Those ambitions could wait until the girls were older. There was something to be said for raising your daughters on a nice, small planet away from the turbulent center of the galaxy. 

Raising two small girls had been harder, much harder, than he’d expected, and he couldn’t have done it without his own staff of assistants and nannies, a luxury that  _ Governor _ Calrissian could now afford. But some of the best times were in the quiet evenings, after the nannies and assistants had left for the night, and it was just him and his girls. 

“A long time ago,” he began, “and far away —”

“On Tatooine!” Leika cried. 

“Yes, far, far away on Tatooine, where it’s  _ so hot _ that if you stand in the sun long enough, you’ll burn up like a crispy piece of nerf bacon!” 

“Ewww!” Leika said gleefully. Soland rolled her eyes. 

The temperature of Tatooine’s sand was as much a wild exaggeration as the rest of the story, but it had left an impression on Lando, who’d vowed never to live in a desert again the minute the Millennium Falcon had left the ground. 

“Everyone on Tatooine lived in fear of Jabba the Hutt, a mean old slug ruled the whole planet. Jabba lived in a great Palace waaaay out in the desert, where no one dared to go, not even the Sand People. The Hutt sent bounty hunters out into the galaxy to bring back treatures to fill up his massive Palace. The bounty hunters brought back jewels from Hapes, perfumes from Kubindi, sweet treats from Chandrila, and rancors from Dathomir. Jabba insisted that he have the best of everything in the galaxy, and he hoarded it all to himself in his Palace. 

“One day, he looked over everything he owned and realized that his collection had nearly everything —except for a princess. But Jabba didn’t want any princess, no, he wanted the last princess of Alderaan.” 

“Aunt Leia!” Leika said. 

“Yes, your Aunt Leia, the last Princess of Alderaan. Jabba sent out his most cunning and evil bounty hunter, Boba Fett, to capture Aunt Leia. Boba Fett chased the Millenium Falcon across the stars until one day, he followed Aunt Leia to Cloud City and laid a trap for her there. Boba Fett had a big, specially made cryogentic capsule that he used to capture Aunt Leia and carry her back to Jabba. But what Boba Fett  _ didn’t  _ realize was that he hadn’t caught Aunt Leia, he caught  _ Uncle Han!” _

Leika gasped as though this wasn’t the hundredth time she’d heard the story. 

“Jabba was  _ furious _ when Fett brought Uncle Han to his court, and he threw your uncle down into a cell in his prison, deep in the ground under the Palace. Uncle Han wasn’t sure he’d see daylight ever again. His only friend was Oola, the beautiful and clever rancor trainer who took care of Jabba’s animals. She shared scraps of food that Jabba fed his servants every day at lunch, and Uncle Han told her all about flying through the stars with Leia on the Millenium Falcon. 

“Your Aunt Leia, Uncle Chewie, and I knew that we had to rescue your uncle from Jabba. We traveled all the way from Cloud City to Tatooine, and then flew across the desert to Jabba’s Palace.” He paused for another dramatic beat. “But when we got to the Palace,  _ no one was there.”  _

“Oh!” Leika cried. “What  _ happened, _ Daddy?” 

“Let him tell the story, Leika,” Soland scolded. Soland liked to listen quietly until the end; Leika wanted to be part of the process. He was glad that Leika choose to ignore her older sister this time and he didn’t have to break up the story for a spat. She patted his hand as a signal to continue, and he went on. 

“Jabba had decided that he would throw Uncle Han to the Sarlacc, a monstrous worm that lived in the sand and was as long as a star destroyer. Jabba told the bounty hunters to bring Uncle Han up from the prisons and load everyone onto his biggest sail barge. 

“When we arrived at the Palace, everyone was gone! Everyone except for Oola, who had hidden in the rancor pen until everyone had left. Oola told us where Jabba had gone and offered to take us there on her rancor. We climbed onto the massive beast and it carried us on its back as it ran over the sand,  _ so fast  _ that soon it caught up to Jabba’s sail barge. 

“Blaster bolts whizzed through as the bounty hunters shot at us, but all they did was make the rancor angrier, and it leapt up onto the deck of the sail barge. We all slipped off the rancor’s back and fell onto the sail barge in a big pile. Aunt Leia’s elbow was right in my ear, and Chewie’s big furry hand was in my mouth!” 

He made faces, and Leika laughed. Even Soland smiled. Never underestimate a bit of slapstick or an easy joke. 

“Uncle Chewie jumped up and began to fight his way across the deck to where Jabba was sitting, and Aunt Leia ran where your Uncle Han was tied up and set him free. But they didn’t see Boba Fett sneaking up on them with his big blaster!” 

“But you got him, didn’t you Daddy?” Leika broke in, unable to restrain herself any longer. 

“Leika, you’re ruining the story!” Soland said. 

“That’s  _ right, _ I threw a punch and he threw a punch,” Lando said as he bobbed and ducked, his fists raised halfway in a mock boxing match. “He tried to get me with his grappling hook, wrapping it around my arms so I couldn’t fight him, but I got my arm free and I hit his jetpack! The jetpack went off and blasted Boba Fett over the side of the barge and into the sand, where he  _ fried up  _ in the heat. 

“But then! Just when we’d defeated Jabba’s bounty hunters and thought we might win, do you know what jumped out of the sand in front the sail barge?” 

“A krayt dragon!” Leika cried. 

“A krayt dragon! A dragon with teeth like knives and wings so big they blocked out the sun. It burst out of the sand, and  _ whoo! _ You should have felt the heat from the dragon’s breath as it blasted across the side of the barge! Jabba was burned to a crisp! 

“The dragon swooped around the ship and came closer and closer. It wasn’t finished with just Jabba; it was still hungry, hungry for human flesh! I didn’t know if we were going to make it out alive! 

“But before the dragon ate us all, the rancor jumped up and landed on the dragon right in mid-air. The dragon tried to shake the rancor off, but the rancor just dug his claws into dragon’s sides. It roared a terrible roar as the dragon spewed red-hot fire, but it kept on fighting. The two creatures battled on and on until finally, the dragon was so tired and worn out that it couldn’t keep them both in the air, and they fell from the sky into the hungry mouth of the sarlacc! Oola’s rancor had saved us all!”  

Leika cheered. 

How they were supposed to have gotten back to civilization from the burning deck of a sail barge, he didn’t know, and they hadn’t asked. 

“...And that,” he said. “Is the end of the story.” 

At least, that was the end of the story he told. 

A bedtime story in which a hero and a princess saved the day, rescued the other hero, killed a dragon, and flew off into the sunset. Simple stories, stories that told his daughters that they were safe from the greedy and evil things that haunted the galaxy, and that no matter what happened, he would go to any length for them. The heroes always won, and they always rescued their loved ones. 

Stories unburdened by motives like his guilt for being complicit in the plot that had gotten Luke Skywalker killed and Han kidnapped, guilt that had gnawed at him throughout the year he spent working his way into the Alliance’s graces, planning the mission with Leia, and then, working and living in the den of the Hutt himself. 

He couldn’t even begin to explain how his relationship with Han had been a tangle of resentment and affection, competition and attraction, and while he never regretted putting his life on the line for his friend, he hadn’t been so sure it was the right decision at the time. Nor had their success been a sure thing, and Lando was well aware the that the heroes didn’t always win the day. The Skywalker kid was proof enough of that. 

He doubted that he’d ever tell them the real story. 

There were parts of the rescue he couldn’t remember clearly anymore, the sequence of events jumbled and blurred over time. What stuck with him were flashes of action, vivid and unsettling memories untethered to a reliable timeline. 

He knew that he spent long, excruciating hours waiting for Leia to arrive at the Palace and set the plan in motion, but the details of that stretch of time were gone. What he remembered was standing before the carbonite slab in dark, the night-vision goggles casting Jabba’s throne room in an eerie gray glow, blurred figures moving across his sight like ghosts. 

He remembered the sickening feeling when the lock froze, and the carbonite remained in place on the wall for a moment that made him doubt that he could get Han out alive, before the lock gave and the slab swung free, dropping sideways onto the hovercart. It landed with a clang that made him wince, but it was lost in the noise from the court, panicking blindly in the dark. He was sweating, his goggles slipping on his face as he maneuvered the hovercart out of the throne room, his mouth so dry it felt like every swallowed curse rasped its way down his throat. 

(and) 

Oola’s face, wild and terrified, when he ran into her in the underlevels. 

_ <I let the rancor free> _ she said, and there was a look of unhinged glee on her face, goulish in the green light of the sandstorm lamps.  _ <Free to tear that filthy fucking slug to pieces!> _ She laughed, a high, hysterical sound. 

He didn’t think, he just grabbed her arm and pulled her with them, away from the screams echoing down from the floor above. 

(and) 

Boba Fett’s cracked helmet, blood pooling beneath the dead bounty hunter’s head, his body limp on the floor of the corridor that led to the sail barge docks. He pushed down the nasty flash of satisfaction at Fett’s death and called for Chewbacca, who lumbered out of the dark, the fur on his left side dark and wet as blood poured from a hidden wound. 

“Are you hurt, friend?” he’d asked, his voice choked with alarm, but Chewie had just brushed his concern away and lifted the slab of carbonite from the hovercart —

(and)

The relief that washed through him when Han peeled away from the carbonite slab and collapsed into his arms. 

(and)

The roar as the east wall of the palace collapsed, the explosion making his teeth rattle and nearly overturning the skiff, which twisted and bucked in the shockwave before he got it under control again. A cloud of smoke, dust, and sand billowed out of the ruin into the flawless blue of the sky; the acrid smell of the palace burning lingered in his memory for months. 

No, he didn’t want them to hear the real story. 

“Now, it’s time for bed,” he told his girls. “Lights out.” 

Leika grumbled a bit, which was the usual routine, and Soland picked up her datapad and followed him out of Leika’s room and down the hall to her own. He paused at the doorway as she sat down on the edge of her bed, tossing the datapad near the pillows. She looked like something was bothering her. 

“Is everything okay, Sweetie?” 

She took a moment, looking back at the datapad as though she wanted to pick it up again and ignore the whole conversation. 

“We started a unit on Outer Rim planets in school this month,” she began, “and I did a report on Tatooine.” 

“Okay,” he said. 

“I knew the stuff about the dragon probably wasn’t true. Krayt dragons don’t  _ really _ breathe fire.  _ Or  _ fly.” This earned him a stern look. He managed not to laugh. 

“You’re right, they don’t,” he admitted. 

“That’s just stuff you say to make Leika happy,” she said. 

“You’ve got me there,” he teased. “When did you get to be so smart?” 

_ “Dad,” _ she said. “I  _ like  _ your stories, but they’re not really true, are they?” 

“We did rescue your uncle from Jabba. That’s true.” 

“It isn’t in any of the history files,” she said. “I looked. There’s a  _ lot  _ of stuff about Jabba on the holonet.” Lando winced inwardly, not entirely comfortable with what she might have dug up on the Hutt’s activities before his death. “But it doesn’t say anything about him and Uncle Han or Aunt Leia. Did you  _ really  _ save him from Jabba? Did that even happen?” 

He’d expected this. Sooner or later, Soland would start asking questions about the facts behind the stories, and frankly, he’d expected it sooner. If he knew Soland, this was only the first volley in a series of questions as she dug up more information on the holonet. Facts, he could manage; he’d always been good at that. But Lando knew there was a difference between hard cold facts and the things he’d had to do during the war, and what he wanted his children to hear somewhere in the middle ground. It was all in how you told the story. 

Lando sighed. “You can’t find everything there is to know on the holonet, Soland. When Leia and I rescued your Uncle it was very dangerous and we kept it a secret to protect the mission. Jabba was a terrible person, and he’s no longer alive because your Aunt is very brave, and we worked very hard to get your Uncle out. Because that’s what a family does for one another.” Just because it was a story, didn’t mean it was  _ untrue.  _

She leaned her head to the side as she considered. “Okay,” she finally said. “Have you ever seen a krayt dragon? Or a rancor?” 

“No,” he admitted. “But I’d like to, someday. But not close up!” He shook his head and raised his hands for dramatic effect, and she giggled. “Your Aunt Leia saw the rancor, though.” 

“Really?” 

“I’ll tell you what. We’ll take a trip to Coruscant next festival week. You can ask Leia herself to tell you the story.” Soland admired Leia more than anyone in the galaxy. “We can stay with Sita, and go to the Coruscant circus, too,” he said. A little bribery and distraction, he knew, worked just as well on underworld bouncers as it did on small children. 

And while they were there he could compare notes with Leia on exactly  _ what  _ they planned to tell their children about a  _ number  _ of significant galactic events that involved their parents, when the kids grew out of bedtime stories and evasions. 

“Okay,” she said, smiling. “Thanks, Dad.” She flopped back onto her bed, curling around her datapad, satisfied for the moment. “‘Night.” 

It might not be defeating Hutts or dragons or rancors, but he could do this. Simple stuff, Han said. Changing diapers and telling bedtime stories and getting your heart ripped out whenever anyone hurt them. 

“Goodnight, sweetheart.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maps and other visuals can be found on my tumblr @celinamarniss under #the death of jabba


	4. Chewbacca

The General was already waiting for him when Patil arrived.

Patil had spent the morning in the library, taking notes on a lengthy account Admiral Ackbar had given on the battle of Vespaxan, and hadn’t even been there to meet the General when he checked in. “He’s already here,” Suri told him when she came to fetch him.

_“Already?_ When did he arrive? Never mind—which room?” He shut down the holo and gathered up a stack of datapads, balancing his cup of caf in the other hand.

Suri checked her datapad. “Interview room five. The green one.”

He rushed past the graduate student and through the halls of the Oral History Department toward the interview rooms. He’d never even met the General before—Akani, who understood Shyriiwook perfectly, was assigned to the conduct the General’s interviews, but Sennin, Etis, and Akani had all called in sick over the last few days, and the entire department was short-handed.

He found the General waiting patiently in a large chair in the green room, across from a table and a chair for Patil, the holorecorder droids hovering nearby. He had the dignified look of a war hero, one who had been decorated at many battles throughout the Galactic Civil War, and was a close personal friend to the Chief of State and many other influential figures in the New Republic government.  

“Um. Thank you for coming here today, General Chewbacca,” Patil said. He winced as his chair made a horrible creaking noise as he sat and his datapads clattered onto the table. Taking a little more care, he placed his coffee cup on a clear space next to his datapads.

“RWAAAHAA,” the General responded. “ARRAH-ARH.”

Was that the Shyriiwook phrase that was an equivalent to “you’re welcome,” or “I beg your pardon?” It sounded like “an order of mussels, please,” but it couldn’t have been that.

Patil had studied Shyriiwook briefly in lower school, but now he could only remember basic vocabulary and the odd phrase. He’d been hoping that Akani had found another substitute to cover her interviews, but no such luck. He was probably going to spend his lunch break ranting to Shu about the fact that the grant to supply the department with more protocol droids hadn’t been funded. Again.

Now that the war had been over for a decade and the galaxy was at peace—minor conflicts between the NR and Imperial Remnant groups notwithstanding—it was more important to than ever to preserve historical accounts. During the Empire “history” had been managed by the Imperial propaganda machine, and extensive records on the Republic had been destroyed or wiped from the holonet entirely. Rebuilding that history and recording accounts of the long war from those who had fought it was essential to understanding what had formed and shaped the New Republic—though those in charge of funding the Department didn’t always seem to understand that.

Projects on romantic, exciting events never seemed to lack for support—if you could throw a reference to Jedi in your proposal, you didn’t even hesitate—but the tedious work of compiling interviews on minor, inconsequential episodes—like the grubby execution of a Rim World crime lord—didn’t even rate a spare protocol droid.  

“My name is Leth Patil,” He began, “and I’ve been assigned to be your archivist today. Archivist Akani sends her regrets that she wasn’t able to make the session due to an illness.”

The General rumbled softly.

Whatever condolences he had offered were lost on Patil. This was going to be more difficult than he’d anticipated. Why couldn’t it have been Admiral Ackbar, or Admiral Nunb? His Sullustese was getting rather good.

“If you’ll give me a minute, please, and then we can start.”

There were holorecorder droids present to document the session, of course, hovering discreetly at intervals throughout the room, but the institution always required that an archivist be present to conduct the interview. He took a few minutes to organize his datapads and to check to make sure the holorecorders were functioning properly.

Typically, a single session would allow the historic personage being interviewed to speak about a battle or significant event, and many of the important figures in the Galactic Civil War had been scheduled for a series of sessions in order to cover long, illustrious careers.

The schedule didn’t necessarily run in chronological order, and looking over the General’s list of interviews, Patil could see that Akani already recorded interviews on the Battles of Endor and Vespaxan, and even on a few military engagements during the Clone Wars.

She’d told Patil that the General was completely comfortable with the process and would speak freely on any of the topics he’d agreed to discuss. All Patil would have to do is prompt him, she promised, and he’d tell his story. Droids and archivists fluent in Shyriiwook would translate and annotate the recordings at a later date.

Today’s session concerned a strike mission the General had been involved in that took out a Hutt crime lord. What was his name? _Jabba?_ He checked the document. Yes, Jabba. A minor incident in the Galactic Civil War; he didn’t even think it was covered in any curriculum on the subject, and he wondered why Akani had scheduled a separate session for it. Was someone in the department working on a report on Outer Rim cartels?

There was only a short brief on the incident:

_Jabba Desilijic Tiure, (600 BBY - 4 ABY, Desilijic Kajilic), known as Jabba the Hutt, assassinated by an independent strike team coordinated by Princess Leia Organa, General Lando Calrissian and General Chewbacca. The Hutt’s activities included drug and human trafficking, slavery, extortion, piracy, and gunrunning, and control over the disputed territory known as “Hutt Space.” The strike team infiltrated Desilijic Tiure’s Tatooine residence and assassinated the Hutt and his top operatives. The death of Jabba Desilijic Tiure led to the collapse of the Hutt’s criminal syndicate. Various operators co-opted his territory and filled the power vacuum left in his absence._

He didn’t have time to look further into the Hutt’s history, and he hoped that whoever was interested in this particular topic didn’t need him to ask any specialized questions. He rattled off the date and time, the codes needed to signify the session had begun and listened for the particular whirring sound the holorecorder droids made when the recording devices engaged.

“Whenever you’re ready, General Chewbacca, please begin your account of the assassination of the crime lord Jabba the Hutt.”

“ARRRR GAH-RAAAAH,” the General began. “AOOOWOO AAAHHAAAHHH ARRAH-AH-AH RRRHAHHRHH AOOO-WARRRH WOOORAH ARRRRAH RRRRRHGH RRRHAHHRHH WARRRGH HWA ARHG AAAHHHWA RUHRUUHHARWA RRRHAHHRHH RUUHAAGH AH-RRRHAHHRHH UUR-AHH ARRRRWA RRRHWOOAH-GHHH ARH RRRHHRRR RRRHAHHRHH AWOOOOA AROOO-ARGHWAAA RRRHAHHRHH RRRHAHHRHH RHA-RHH RHA-ARHH AROOOH HWAWAAH RHA WAARHG AOOOW ARRRRAH RRRHAHHRHH URAHHHRUHH ARRRR RAH-ARHHHHHH HGAAA MRAWWW RHAH-RHAH URRRH AAAHHHWA AURHHAHRHHHH ARRRRAH AAAHHHWA  RRRHH WARRRH URRURHHH ARRAH-AH-AH GHRUUH AROOOOUR ARHHH AAAHHRRAAAHHH URAR-ARRRR—”

Akani had been right about the General; he seemed to be happy to speak at length with little encouragement from Patil at all. He hadn’t met enough Wookies to know if this was a common cultural trait, or if the General just had a particularly talkative nature.

Patil could only comprehend about one word in ten, small scraps of understanding never added up to a whole. There as a particular phrase, RRRHAHHRHH, that came up over and over, and Patil had no clue what it meant. He was _fairly_ sure it wasn’t Jabba’s name in Shyriiwook. As the General went on he could make out the words for dancer, Twi’lek, explosives, something to do with bounty hunters, rancor —wait, _rancor?_

“Can you elaborate on that?” It was his job, after all, to encourage the narrative to flow from topic to topic, and to draw out significant details. He just wasn’t entirely sure _what_ he’d asked the General to talk about.

“—MRAWWW RRRHAHHRHH HRRRR-AWW ARRRRAH OORAH  RR-RR-AHH AAAHHHWA WAHHHHHHH RRRAH HRHH NARGHHRHUH ARH HRRWHOO WUWOO WORAH AAAAARRRRAH-ARRRRAH RRRHAHHRHH GRAHHHRH WARRRHHHH ARR-RR-AHHA MRWHAHRRRR-AWWWR URAHHHRUHH ARRR RRRHAHHRHH RAH-ARH OORAH—”

There was an apologetic tap on the door. The General broke off, turning his head toward the source of the interruption.

“Do you mind?” Patil asked, and when the General shook his head, rumbling a negative, he called: “come in.”

The door slid open and a silver protocol droid shuffled in and bowed stiffly, its arms frozen in the awkward angles characteristic of a protocol droid.

“Pardon me, Archivist Patil, General Chewbacca. I am C-321, translation specialist, fluent in eight million forms of communication. Mistress Suri pulled me from my previous assignment to facilitate this interview.”

Force bless her. He’d have to buy her lunch.

“I have been briefed on the session’s topic and informed that the General understands Basic, but that you, Archivist Patil, need a translator to interpret the General’s Shyriiwook.”

“Thank you, See-Threetwentyone,” Patil said. “I don’t think we need to start from the beginning again, General, if you’d prefer to just continue on where you left off?” Given the limited time for a session, he didn’t want the General to repeat himself just so Patil could understand what was going on.

The General nodded; a regal bow of his head. Patil and See-Threetwentyone waited as he gathered his thoughts, and continued.

“HMWAAAH GNAAAHH AAA-AAAHHAAAHHH ARHGHH AHHHWA RRHAHH ARRRRAH AOOO-WARRRH WOOORAH RAH-ARHHRRRR-AWW AROOO-AR RR-RR-AHH HWAHWAHWA HNGAAA AOOO-WARRR-HHH RUH URGHH ARRHHHAA ARHAAA RUGHH WAAHRHAH WAARH GRWHWHAAAHURRRR RRRHRRR ARRRRAH RAH-ARH ARHHHRH RUHWHH RWHAHRR.”

“The General says, as he stated earlier,” See-Threetwentyone translated, “that he was in the lower levels of Jabba’s palace for quite some time after freeing himself from his shackles.”

That the General had been captured during the mission was a _significant_ detail that had gone completely over his head. He wondered what else he’d missed before the translator had arrived.

“While wandering through the underlevels,” See-Threetwentyone went on, “he discovered a pit below the throne room where Jabba kept a rancor, so that he could throw unwary beings to the monster. My goodness, how awful!”

While Patil agreed with See-Threetwentyone’s comment, it _was_ a creative way to get rid of people who annoyed you. Perhaps Rim crime lords were more interesting than he had thought.

“HHHGRGHRA WOOORAH AHHRHH RHUHAAH ARH GRHHR AHRHHGHHUR RGHH AAA-AAAHHAAAHHH HRRRR-AWW WOOORAH RRHAHH ARRRRAH WAARH GRWHWHAAAHURRRR RAH-ARH HAHRRRR-AW AHHRHH AR RR AROOO-AR GRAHHHRH WARRRHHHH WOOARUR RRH UHRA ARHHUOO ARHHHURUHRUHAAA AWOORUR URGHAGH ARR-ARR RRRHAHHRHH—”

“The door to the pit had been torn right out of the wall!” See-Threetwentyone translated, its arms jerking around in emphasis. “The rancor had managed to break free from its prison and was loose in the palace! The General did not see it escape, but he could hear the rancor in throne room above. He regrets that he was unable to return to the upper levels and aid Princess Leia, but he had to finish his hunt for the bounty hunter Boba Fett.”

The droid turned stiffly toward Patil. “The General uses a specific Shyriiwook phrase, ARHHHURUHRUHAAA, which literally translates as “blood hunt,” and is a Wookie cultural tradition of hunting an individual who has wronged an entire Wookie clan. It is rare for a Wookie to take such an oath.”

“WAAAHAA RWHAHRRWHO AOOOWOO RRRHAHHRHH MRWHAHRR AOOO-WARR HAHRRRR-AWW WOOAH-GHH HAHRRRR-AW AR WARRGHWA GHWAH RRRHAHHRHH AHHRHHAOOO WHAAAAA GHW HMWA RHAH RHAHRHAH AHRWHOURRR GHWAA RRRHAHHRHH ARRGH AR-HRRWHOO-OOWRRRHAHHRHH—”

Patil nearly jumped when the Wookie’s arm raised suddenly as he made a sweeping gesture to emphasize a particular story point. See-Threetwentyone simply tilted its head.

“—RRAH-RRAH WARR AWOOW MRWHAHRRRR-AWWWR RRRHAHHRHH AWOOW HWARRGH AHHRHH AROOO-ARHHH HRRRR-AWW RGHH HMWA HAHRRRR-AW AR-ARRRRAH RRRHAHHRHH RUUHAAGH HWAHWA AROOOO ARRH-AROW.”

“When he discovered Boba Fett in the underlevels, he found that the bounty hunter had taken one of Jabba’s dancers hostage, a Twi’lek woman by the name of Oola. He held her at gunpoint as he threatened the General. The General was hesitant to attack Boba Fett directly, until Oola knocked the bounty hunter’s weapon aside with her chain. The General was impressed with the dancer’s heroism and strength.”

“HAHRRRR-AW AR RGHH RWUHRRR RUHTRRR AROOWRH HAHRRRR-AWGRAHHHRH ARR ARHHHURUHRUHAAA AOOOWOO RRRHA HRHHAOO AOOOHRHOO MRWHAHRR AHHAAAHHH WOOAH-GHH GNAAAHH RRRHWOOAH-GHHH ARH RRRHHRRR ARRRRAH AAAHHHWA URAR-ARR RRRTHUR AOOO-WARRRH ARRRRWA HGAAA URRR-MRAWWW AWRRHR URHUR RUUTHROO ARRHRHA RUUHHH ARHH AR-HRRWHOO-OOWRRRHAH RWUHRRR ARR WOOAH-GHH WARGHHAR-AROOO-AR URAHHHRUHH AHHRHH URH AHHRHHAOOO WARRGHWA ARHHHURUHRUHAAA AWOOW HAROOWW GHRHURUUU AOOORHHHH AROOOHHH RUHH ARRHRUR-UAHRRH NRRRGHHH UUR-AHH ARH-GHH RHA-ARHH URRRRR AROOOH MRWHAHRR-AHHHWA.”

“The General killed Boba Fett.” See-Threetwentyone paused. “It’s much more gruesome in the original Shyriiwook; would you like a literal translation, Sir?”

“No, thank you, See-Threetwentyone, I appreciate your restraint.”

“GHRGHGH WRRHRAWRRHR ARH-GHH AR-AROOO-AR ARUHH WOORRRR AHRGHRGH AHHRHH HAHRRRR-AW RRRHAHHRHH WARRRGH ARHG KHRAAAHHH RRRHAHHRHH UUHAAGH ARRRRAH AH-RRR-HAHHRHH ARRRRWAHWAAAAHHHWA ARRRRAH ARHH RRR-HAHH-RHH UUR-AHH.”

“The General met General Calrissian and Princess Leia at the sail barge docks, as they had planned, along with the dancer Oola and General Solo. They stole Jabba’s great sail barge Khetanna, to make their escape from the Hutt’s palace.”

“AHR WOOAH-GHH HRRRRAW AOOOW URAHHHRUHH MRWHAHR HGAAA AHRRRR RAH-ARHHHHHH RHA-ARHHRUGH ARHH WHAHRRR RGHH-HMGH GAH-RAAAAH—”

In spite of himself, his mind began to wander as the General continued his monologue, with See-Threetwentyone’s accompanying drone.

“—MRWHAHR RGHRGHGH ARRWOOOOW AWRRHR—”

“They then set off for the Millenium Falcon—”

His annotations on the Vespaxan interviews were due at the end of the week, but he was losing enthusiasm for the project and his mind soon drifted to a fantasy about the nerf sliders with yushi mushrooms served at the cafe near Historical Records—was it lunchtime yet? He took a surreptitious look at his chrono. If the General went on for too long, he wouldn’t have time to make it down to Historical Records, order lunch, and make it back on time for his next meeting. Despite the fact that Historical Records and Oral History were technically part of the same faculty, a long rivalry between the heads of the respective departments meant that when the University had been re-established on Coruscant after the war, they had insisted on locating their departments on opposite sides of the building. No one held a grudge like a Historical Records Archivist.

“—ARRRRAH OORAH WAHH MRWHAHRRRR-AWWWR RRR-HAHH-RHH AWOOOOW WARGHHAR AROOO-AR WOORRRR AHRGHRGHGHHHHH ARHRRRRHR—”

Ten minutes later, he realized that the General had meandered off the topic into a lecture on ship models, though he wasn’t entirely clear how that had happened. Though See-Threetwentyone continued to translate dutifully, Patil caught on in the middle of the Wookie’s enthusiastic monologue on the capabilities of a YT light freighter hyperdrive engine, when he realized he was picking up more of the Shyriiwook than he had earlier in the session.

He could thank his Shyriiwook instructor for the fact that nearly two decades later he could still remember the words for engine, hyperdrive, and _ion flux stabilizer with alluvial dampeners_ , even if he wasn’t entirely sure what an ion flux stabilizer _was_. His instructor had once been cheated by a Wookie spaceship salesman and remained forever bitter about the experience. As a consequence, the class had spent weeks memorizing an extensive vocabulary list pertaining to spaceship models. It was not a lesson he had _ever_ expected to come in handy. It was astonishing how the mind could recall dormant fragments of language, even after all these years.

It wasn’t, however, relevant to the topic at hand. This was one of the reasons an Archivist needed to be present; to guide a subject back on topic if they rambled off on tangents. A translator protocol droid wasn’t programmed to take that initiative, and so See-Threetwentyone continued to translate the General’s lecture on ship specs without question.

He waited for the General to pause, and before See-Threetwentyone could begin: “That’s very illuminating, but I was wondering if you could tell us _your_ impressions of Jabba Desilijic Tiure, General.”

“WHAHRRRR-AWW.” The General mad a sound, that had he been human, Patil would have called a scoff. “HAROOWW RRH WARRRHRRRR HWA OAH-GHAAA UUUURR WRAROOO ARH-ARH-AHH GRHHRRRRR-AWARRR.”

He’d only caught that gist of what the General had said, but it sounded like a fairly obscene turn of phrase. Well, he hadn’t expected the Wookie’s opinions of Desilijic Tiure to be _positive_ , considering the General had helped to _assassinate_ him.

The protocol droid tilted backward, managing to convey shock and displeasure without the benefit of facial expressions. “I don’t think I can translate that accurately, Archivist Patil.”

“That’s alright, I got the idea.”

The Wookie laughed, a huff-huff-huffing sound, and Patil managed a half-smile. Had it been a joke? He had _no_ idea.

“What did you think of the public reaction to Desilijic Tiure’s death, General?” Patil asked.

“ARRRR GAH AOOOWOO GRHHR RRRHAHHRHH HRRRR-AWW WOOAH-GHH AHHRHHAOOO HWA ARRR-HAHRRRR-AW WHAAAA ARRRRAH ARRRRRRRRHRHHRRR ARRH-AROW AAAAAGHWHMW ARRRRAH-ARRRRAH RAH-ARH AOOOHH-WARRRH HWA MRWHA RGHH-HMWA RRRHAHHRHH RRRR-AWWWHARRR WHAHRRR RRRH RRR RHWOOAH-GH AHRRRRH GWHA GAH-RAAAAH-GRHHR .”

“The General states that the Hutt was a vile individual and that the Galaxy was a better place without him. His death freed many individuals from his service, and the event is rightfully celebrated in Fringe communities. The General notes that the story of the strike mission’s success was used by the Alliance as a recruiting method on several Hutt-controlled worlds.”

“ARHUGHR WOOARA.”  

“That is all he has to say on the topic.”

Still, Patil had to ask. “Is there anything else you’d like to add? Anything other details that aren’t in the official report?”

The General considered, and then barked a negative. He stood, towering over the table. Patil scrambled to his feet as well. He had forgotten how _big_ Wookies were. 

“Thank you for your time, General.”

“AOOO-WARRRH RRRRH,” the General said.

"The General says that he had a most pleasant time, and looks forward to your next meeting with great anticipation." See-Threetwentyone bowed again and followed the General out, shuffling off to its next translation assignment. 

Patil ran into Sennin in the hallway. The other Archivist still looked unwell, sniffling damply as he reviewed a schedule with a Bothan graduate student.

“Have you seen Suri?” Patil asked. “She loaned me a protocol droid for my session I’d like to thank her.”

“I think she’s out for lunch,” Sennin said, peering down at the faculty schedule. “Which session was that?”

“I just wrapped up an interview with General Chewbacca,” Patil said as Senin made a note on the datapad. “—In spite of the fact that I didn’t know what was _going on_ half the time. Thanks for that.”

Sennin just sniffed again and adjusted the schedule, unmoved by Patil’s sarcasm.

“Chewbacca?” The Graduate student—Esho, he thought her name was—broke in. “He’s _so_ dreamy, isn’t he?”

It wasn’t the adjective that came to Patil’s mind, but he supposed that the Wookie was probably considered attractive among his fellow Wookies. Patil had _liked_ the General, he just felt out of his depth when it came to the communication gap.

“He’s handsome, I suppose,” he granted. “A good interview subject.”

“Did you ask him about the Kessel Run? He navigated the Run in less than twelve parsecs!”

“Now, Esho,” Sennin said. “This is not the place for hero worship.” He passed the datapad over to Patil. “You’re scheduled to interview him again tomorrow.”

Patil’s heart sank a little as he looked at the schedule of interviews. The time slot reserved for the interview was twice as long as the one he’d just completed and the topic, though not a major operation in the war, looked as though it was significant to the General. No protocol droids had been assigned to the session.

Esho leaned over to look as well. “Oh! The first battle of the Liberation of Kashyyyk!”

“How’s your Shyriiwook?” he asked her.

Her face fell and she shrugged, her fur rippling despondently.

“Excellent,” he said as though he hadn’t noticed. “You can assist with the interview.” He added her to the schedule block. If he couldn’t steal See-Threetwentyone again, Esho would do, and between the two of them, they’d muddle through.

“Really?”

“Yes,” Patil said. “Provided you make sure that I’m not late to meet the General tomorrow. And if we finish on time you can ask about the—” What was it called? “...Kessel Run.”

“Thank you, Archivist Patil!”

“It’s not a problem,” he told her. It wasn’t. In retrospect, the General would probably enjoy talking about the Kessel Run, considering how animated he had been over spaceship specs, and Patil thought it would be more entertaining for the both of them with Esho’s enthusiasm in the room. He had no doubt she’d have a list of questions that he hadn’t even thought of, and he suspected her commentary would be more entertaining than See-Threetwentyone’s stilted translations.

“Now,” he said. _Nerf sliders,_ he thought. _Nerf sliders with yushi mushrooms, taffan sauce and just a single slice of botta cheese._ “Let’s go get lunch.”


	5. Ben

As far as Ben was concerned, the layover on Dalastine hadn’t _entirely_ been a wash. He’d needed to refuel the ship Talon had loaned him anyway, and having an overnight on-planet, even one as unremarkable as Dalastine, meant that he could get some fresh air and a meal that didn’t consist primarily of ration packs. He left BB-12 arguing with a fuel droid, which was one of BB-12’s great pleasures in life, and headed out to look for something to eat.

There wasn’t much to do or see on the small, Inner Rim planet, and most of the people he saw as he sauntered through the spaceport were just like him: travelers refueling their ships before heading on to brighter, more bustling locales. There wasn’t much open, either, which was surprising considering how close it was to dinnertime. He bought a hot tampia from a street vendor and a package of dried juba berries for Meena, but up and down the street, stores were closing or already shuttered for the day.

“Storm’s coming,” a Trandoshan growled as they pulled a metal shutter down over the entrance to their establishment. “Best get inside, human juvenile.”

“Thanks,” Ben said.

He didn’t want to head back to the ship and be stuck there for the duration of the storm, so he kept an eye out until he found a cantina that looked like it would be open for the night. His jacket snapped against his side as the wind picked up, and he could feel the temperature dropping. The sky looked dark and heavy, and he felt a few raindrops spatter across his face, signaling the approaching weather.

The cantina he selected seemed cozy by comparison; it was small and not too clean, the lights dimmed to the standard murky levels that seemed to have been adopted by most spaceport cantinas. There were no holoscreens for newscasts or sports events, and while there was a booth in a corner of the cantina for a small musical act, the band had retired for the night. Most of the patrons who had made it inside before the storm hit had gathered around the large oval bar, nursing their drinks as they hunkered in for the night.

The bar was presided over by a large but amiable-looking bartender. Ben wasn’t sure he could properly identify the bartender’s species; perhaps a Besalisk, with all those limbs. In Ben’s opinion, multi-limbed species made the best bartenders. He chose an empty stool beside a Chandra-Fan, who was short enough that he could make eye-contact with the middle-aged Twi’lek woman in the next seat over.

“Talhovian ale, please,” he told the bartender, sliding his credit chip across the counter.

As he took his first sip, the rain came down, and even in the back of the cantina the sound of it beating against the front door was louder than Ben had expected, a sudden irregular drumming that momentarily drowned out conversation. Beside him, the Chandra-Fan’s ears twitched as she flinched at the noise.

Eventually, the roar dulled to background static, and conversation picked up again as they all adjusted to the sound of the rain gusting against the walls of the building. On Ben’s other side, an old human spacer was quietly sipping a whiskey, and further down a pair of Rodians were bickering over a bet. Two beings in heavily embroidered veils that obscured their species and gender were tucked into the far corner, engaged in a private conversation. A Sullustan sat on the other side of the Twi’lek woman, and beyond him an Aqualish with an exposed-metal prosthetic arm.

“Do you get storms like this one often?” Ben asked the barkeep.

The barkeep gave him an affirmative jerk of his head. “Frequent this time of year.”

“When will it let up?”

“A few hours before sunrise,” the Spacer next to Ben said.

“I told you so,” one of the Rodians said to his companion. He had an accent that sounded like it came from lower-level Coruscant, though his friend had a broader, Outer Rim drawl.

“You did not.”

“I did! You were talking to that Jawa at the market and you weren’t listening!”

“That Jawa gave me a good tip!”  

“Pfft, you lost all our money anyway!”

“That reminds me,” the Sullustan said. “Have you ever heard the one about the Jawa and the Toydarian bookie?”

This was followed by the one about the one-legged Twi’lek, and the one about the difference between an Imperial Moff and a ‘Rim Senator. They’d all heard that one, and no one laughed but the Sullustan, who chortled heartily at every punchline; everyone in the bar looked relieved when he ran out of jokes.

[The only joke I know,] the Aqualish said. [Is the one about Jabba the Hutt and the slave girl—]

“Jabba the Hutt?” the Rodian with the Outer Rim accent asked. “The one who was killed by the Princess?”

She was still called “the Princess,” or the “the Rebel Princess” out on the Rim, even though his aunt had held many titles in the years since the Emperor’s defeat. She’d been at the head of the New Republic, in one capacity or another, for so long that now it was hard to imagine a galaxy where his aunt _wasn’t_ in charge.

“Yeah, the Rebel Princess snuck into Jabba’s palace and strangled him with her own hands,” his companion said.

Ben couldn’t have asked for a better opening. If the Aqualish hadn’t handed it to him like a solstice gift, he would have spent all night looking for a way to casually introduce the topic.

“That’s not how I heard it,” he said.

“Whatta you know, kid?” the man beside him scoffed. “You weren’t even born when Jabba died!”

Ben flipped back the collar of his jacket briefly, flashing the symbol printed there. It was one of the symbols Talon Karrde’s crew wore to identify themselves. Comprehension dawned on a couple of the faces around the bar. Talon had absorbed businesses, smuggling routes, and crew from Jabba’s syndicate when the Hutt had died. He let his audience assume he had the inside story from a fellow crewmember—and even though he _had_ only been a baby when his aunt had killed the Hutt, he’d heard a dozen tall tales on the topic when he’d worked for Talon. Everyone had a story about the day Jabba had died. None of those stories were accurate.

“The Rebel Princess didn’t act alone,” he said. “Jabba the Hutt was killed by Master Jade of the Jedi Order.”

He had their attention now. The bartender drifted closer, and the two Rodians leaned around the Spacer to get a better look.

“The Jedi woman?” one of the Rodians asked.

“The Jedi did it!” his companion exclaimed. “I knew it!”

“You did not, Kreg!”

“I saw one of the Jedi once before they were wiped out,” the Spacer commented. “Only a kid, then, on Tibrin, during the Clone Wars. I saw one of the Jedi Commanders leading the clone troops.”

[I saw one of the new Jedi on Coruscant,] the Aqualish said. [It was very young. I don’t think it could do the things they say that Jedi can do.]

“It’s all a con,” the Sullustan grumbled. “The NR wants you to _think_ they’ve got their own personal wizards, but it’s just a smokescreen to cover up what they’re _really_ up to. It’s all a flimscam.”

The Jedi were still myths to these people. The new Jedi Order was only a little over a decade old, and the old Jedi Order had been wiped three decades before that. During that time, the Empire had painted the Jedi as out-of-touch, corrupt, and treacherous, an extension of the old-fashioned Republic institution that no longer had any place in the Empire. Many still believed the Jedi were not to be trusted, if they believed in the Jedi at all.

“Let the kid tell it,” the Twi’lek woman said. Her skin was dark green in the dim light of the bar, and she spoke Basic with a heavy accent.

[Please tell the story,] the Chandra-Fan beside him squeaked.

He nodded thanks to the Twi’lek and the Chandra-Fan, and waited a few moments until everyone at the bar had focused their attention on him. He’d been practicing.

“Back in those days,” he began, “the Hutt’s domain rivaled Palpatine’s empire and was unmatched in its corruption and cruelty. His courts were infamous dens of decadence, where life was cheap and the spice flowed freely.”

There were faint nods of agreement from the old-timers who remembered those days. The Spacer and the Twi’lek woman certainly remembered, though nothing in their faces gave away how they felt about that era of their lives.

“Master Jade was only a young Jedi apprentice then, fighting on the side of the Rebellion with her heart’s sister, Princess Leia Organa. During the darkest hours of the war, Princess Leia sent Jade to seek out the last great Master of the Jedi, Master Yoda, who had escaped from the Emperor’s purge and lived in hiding, deep in the Outer Rim. Jade carried a message to the Jedi Master from the Princess’s lips: ‘Help us, Master Yoda, you’re our only hope.’

“Jade spent a whole year searching for the Jedi Master before she found him, living alone on a planet with no other sentient life. At first, he turned her away. He told her he was too old to fight in the war, and she was too old to train in the ways of the Jedi, but she refused to leave, sitting outside his hut in the rain until the old Jedi Master relented.”

Of course, it hadn’t really gone like that. His mother _had_ told him that Yoda had acted as though he was reluctant to train his parents at first, but Yoda’s motivations had been more complicated.

There _had_ been a lot of rain, though. His mother was very clear about that.

He’d pulled other details from family stories, as well as cribbing plotlines and tropes from classic holodramas, crafting his tale using storytelling traditions that would be familiar to his audience. There _were_ conventions, after all.

They were a good audience too; they listened attentively and didn’t interrupt the flow of the narrative. He knew that it probably helped that they were a captive audience, well aware that the night’s entertainment consisted of whatever jokes, gossip, and stories the group had to offer.

“Jade spent months—years—training in the mystical arts of the Jedi with Master Yoda. She learned how to speak mind to mind with her master, how to see a black shadow moth in the darkest night, and how to hear the sound of her enemy’s heartbeat approaching from miles away. She spent a whole month keeping a stone hovering in the air without moving from her meditation, nothing passing her lips the entire time.”

It wasn’t _exactly_ an accurate description of Jedi training, _sure._ But he didn’t think it hurt to give the Jedi order some poetic mystery; to let it instill a bit of awe. Most Jedi training was kind of boring to talk about anyway. 

“When she had completed her training, Master Yoda told Jade that she must face one more trial before he could bestow the title of Jedi Knight upon her. He told Jade that Jabba’s empire must not stand any longer, and he sent her out to vanquish the Hutt. Before she left he gifted her with a lightsaber—the fabled weapon of a Jedi—a lightsaber that had once been wielded by one of the last great Jedi Knights, Anakin Skywalker, the Hero with No Fear.”

He carried that lightsaber now. His mother had carried it, and his father before her, and before him—his grandfather.

Before he died, his grandfather had begged them for forgiveness. “I don’t know if you deserve it,” Ben remembered his mother saying, and Ben wondered if his grandfather deserved a place in this story; if he deserved to be resurrected as a mythical hero from long ago.

He still had a lot of complicated feelings about his grandfather.

The lightsaber rested heavy against his ribs in the hidden pocket of his jacket. When he was growing up his mother used to let him hold it in his hands, as long as he never touched the activation switch. He liked to feel the weight of it, to run his fingers over the cool metal, and feel the throb of the kyber crystal—the heart of every lightsaber. It was the only thing his father had owned that they had; the only thing he could touch that his father had touched.

It was tradition, apparently, to build a lightsaber of one’s own, but he hadn’t wanted to give it up. “Improve it,” his mother said, an eyebrow raised.

He’d spent weeks studying the weapon, taking it apart piece by piece, rewiring the electronic components and cleaning and replacing parts that had been worn down by decades of use. In order to rebuild the center section of the cylinder, he spent time in a machinist’s shop, learning to craft the pieces himself. He sunk the boxy control switch into the hilt and replaced the worn black grips on the handle with shiny new rubber strips.

His mother’s Force signature had left an impression on the blade, and in mediation his could feel her presence resonate through the kyber crystal like the peal of a bell. He could feel the answering echo of his father’s signature, a faint trace from the few years he’d carried the lightsaber, and the fainter sense of his grandfather, who’d carried the lightsaber before he’d turned. The lingering whisper of a Force signature was the closest he could actually get to knowing his father.

None of that was particularly relevant to the story he was telling.

“Jade returned to the Princess’s side, and together they traveled to Tatooine, where Jabba ruled from a magnificent Palace out in the middle of the Dune Sea. The Hutt’s Palace was both a monument to his wealth and power and fortress that not even the Empire could breach—until the Princess and the Jedi arrived, that is. Jabba’s weak-minded guards were defenseless against a Jedi mind trick, and they opened the gates at a wave of her hand and led her and the Princess through the Palace to the Hutt’s throne room.

“Jabba’s throne room was the jewel of his Palace, with high arched ceilings covered with exquisite mosaics and shining marble floors. Crouched beside Jabba’s throne was a great rancor, with a long chain around its throat that held the beast in bondage. The Hutt himself lounged on a golden throne, looking down on his degenerate court, who dressed in silks and gems stolen from all over the galaxy. He looked down on the Princess and the Jedi as they approached his throne and asked to be granted an audience with the Mighty Jabba.

“The Hutt, amused by the thought that anyone from the Rebellion would dare to face him, granted them the right to speak. The Princess spoke first, advising Jabba to surrender, and the Jedi told him he had a choice: to give up his criminal empire or die.

“Jabba just laughed. He laughed and laughed, drowning out their words of warning. When he had finished laughing, he laughed again, and then he pulled on the rancor’s chain and ordered the beast to kill the Princess and the Jedi. The massive creature rose to its full height, towering above the Hutt on his throne, and snapped its bone-crushing teeth in hunger.

“Jade stepped between the rancor and the Princess. She raised her hands and called on Jedi magic to calm the monster and bring it under her sway. The creature closed its jaws and bowed its head to her. With a wave of her hand, the chains that bound the creature to Jabba turned to dust.

“As the Jedi tamed Jabba’s monster, the Princess stood between the Hutt and his court, who were watching to see which way the conflict might fall. She looked at the dancing girls, whose bodies were entertainment for Jabba and his guests, at the musicians, who were contracted to play until their fingers bled, and at the Jawas and droids who spent their lives serving the Hutt.

“She said: “Do not be afraid. Look around you; you are not alone. Beside you are your brothers and sisters, who have also suffered under Jabba’s reign. Fight the disgusting slug! Stand up, break your chains, and fight for freedom, for a free Tatooine!”

Everyone at the bar would recognize echoes of one of Leia Organa’s most famous speeches during the war, given to incite planets to rise up against the Empire, which had been broadcasted illegally across the galaxy. When he was a little he’d watched it over and over, marveling that the brave Rebel in the holo was his aunt who he’d never met. People still remembered those speeches, remembered the Rebel Princess who fought alongside them, though these days Leia Organa’s public appearances consisted of carefully orchestrated speeches and ceremonies. It wasn’t a coincidence that she did the talking in his story.

He didn’t think Aunt Leia would mind him cribbing bits of her speech. He _hoped._

“Jade drew her lightsaber, a silver hilt with a blade of green light that could cut through anything, and leapt onto the throne where Jabba sat. He screamed, shouting for his guards and cursing the Jedi. There was a brilliant flash as the lightsaber cut through the air, and, with a single stroke, the mighty Hutt was dead.

“Seeing their master dead at the hands of the Jedi and the Princess, the slaves and servants rose up and killed Jabba’s slavers and bounty hunters, and set fire to the Palace until it burned to the ground. After that day, it was no more than a heap of rubble in the desert.

“As Jabba’s palace burned, Jade saw a vision of her old Master in the flames. He told her: ‘You have passed your trials, my child. You are a Jedi now.’ Standing before the vision of her Master she took an oath, as all Jedi do, to be a guardian of peace and justice, to bring light to the galaxy and to strike down all those who would do evil.

“She was a Jedi Knight; the heir to the Jedi Order. But she knew she still had many things to lean until she hunted down Vader and the Emperor, and she went out into the galaxy to serve the light side of the Force, like the knights of the old age.”

The bar was quiet as he finished his tale, only the sound of the rain drumming on the roof filling the room. The barkeep refilled his drink and waved away Ben’s credits.

“A good story, kid,” the Spacer said. “And I’ve been hearing stories about the death of the Hutt since before you were born.”

Ben squashed a flash of annoyance. Did he really look _that_ young?

[I liked when the Jedi used her magic,] the Chandra-Fan said, and repeated her point for emphasis, [The magic was my favorite.]  

His mother probably wouldn’t approve of her life’s work being reduced to a tall tale told in a cantina, but Ben knew that people’s minds and hearts wouldn’t be swayed by news reports on whatever good deeds the Jedi were doing on far-flung planets. They needed to change the narrative, to repair the reputation that Palpatine’s propaganda machine had stolen from them.

(He always listened when Talon rambled on and on about “the advantages of controlling public opinion by crafting a narrative that suited one’s own objectives.” He knew his stepfather didn’t think he was listening, but he _was_.)

The death of Jabba, utter nonsense that it actually was, was only one of many stories he’d planned to seed in cantinas like this one. It started _here,_ in telling stories with plots like holothrillers in spaceport bars; tales that cast the Jedi as heroes. The stories would trickle out, from spaceport to spaceport, spreading from ear to ear.

The Twi’lek drained her glass and set it back down on the counter. “I’ve never heard it told like that before,” she said. She signaled to the barkeep, who filled her glass again and then moved down the bar to offer the Aqualish another beer.

“I’ve heard the story from those who were there,” he said. Which was true, in a way. He’d heard the true story of Jabba’s death from Leia and Han and Chewie; it just wasn’t the story he’d told.

The woman shrugged. “You told it well.”

Ben took another look at the older woman. She was dressed in a plain but well-fitted spacer’s jacket, her clothes and boots stylish but nondescript. Her wrists were covered with ornate silver bracelets that matched an ornament decorating the leather headband that covered the dome of her head. If he had to guess, he’d say that the distinctive wrought silver had come from Ryloth.

The lapels on her jacket told a story, too: three pins for service in the Alliance military. He recognized one of the pins, a commemorative pin worn by veterans of the Battle of Bilbringi; his aunt and uncle each had one. The Twi’lek was about the same age as his mother and aunt, so that tracked. She might have even known his aunt or uncle if she served in the Alliance during the same time—or she might not, if she had been assigned to different Rebel cell.

“How would you tell it?” he asked her.

She looked away, down at the glass she held in her hands.

“This is how I would tell it: the Jedi never came and saved anyone from that stinking hole of a palace. The Princess and her people did that. They released the rancor like a god of chaos into the Hutt’s den.” She paused. “The rancor had the sweetest meal of its short life, feasting on its master before the walls fell in and crushed it.”

She stared into her drink, tilting it so that the amber liquid swirled against the glass.

“The Princess killed the Hutt because he stole her husband. She didn’t care about anyone else the slug had enslaved. But.” She set the glass down with a soft clink. “She gave everyone in that Palace a gift. She gave them their lives, and they will never forget that.”

She rubbed a hand at the base of her unadorned neck. “Your story is prettier than mine, Jedi, but I understand why you tell it so sweet.”

Ben managed not to react to the title. The Chandra-Fan turned and blinked narrow eyes up at him and then looked at his belt for the lightsaber that wasn’t there. On his other side, the Spacer was listening to the Rodians calling questions across the bar to the Aqualish, and didn’t appear to have heard the woman’s comment.

His mother did her best to keep him out of the spotlight on Coruscant (his cousins weren’t so lucky), but he was well-known on the Fringe for his connection to his stepfather. It was just as possible she recognized him as made a lucky guess. Or perhaps she’d just assumed based on his choice of story, though most beings thought that Jedi only ever wore plain brown robes, which was the point of a uniform, after all.

“Stories change,” he said blandly.

She nodded. “They mean differently. Here and there. Then and now.” Her next words were so soft he barely heard them over the sound of the rain. “I was a dancer, once—”

“You’re not listening, Kreg—” one of the Rodians broke out loudly, and all three of them looked up at the sound. The Rodians and the Aqualish were having a loud debate over the various merits and drawbacks of an ion vs a turbine podracer engine.

The Twi’lek flicked him an amused glance. When there was finally a lull in the argument, she spoke.

“I would like to hear another story about the Jedi,” she said pitching her voice just loud enough that everyone at the bar could hear.

[Yes! Tell another story about the Jedi.] the Chandra-Fan squeaked eagerly. [Tell us about the knights of the old Republic.]

Around the bar, conversation died away as the other patrons leaned in to listen to another story. The barkeep set down his towel, not even pretending to work as he listened. The rain continued to beat down on the roof, having lulled into a soothing, an almost hypnotic sound.

Ben began. “A long time ago, far far, away…”


End file.
